"War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the people who have the courage to meet it."

--Benito Mussolini

La Triviata

Depending upon the weather, during the Second World War a German Army field bakery company with two mixers and seven ovens could produce between 15,000 and 19,200 bread rations a day.

Lt Col Anthony Gale is the only Commandant of the Marine Corps (Mar. 3, 1819-Oct. 16 1820) for whom there is no known picture.

In 1709 Tsar Peter the Great hit upon a unique of communicating with the besieged garrison of Poltava; messages were inserted in hollow cannon shells and were fired back and forth over the heads of the besieging Swedes.

Once, during the Vietnam War, an acoustic sensor hidden in a tree detected the presence of two VC – a man and a woman – who were taking a break from the war in a particularly passionate fashion.

Between 1916 and 1934 an annual average of 19-percent of the officers in the Marine Corps were engaged in one or another of the “Banana Wars.”

At the onset of the Roman Civil War, Julius Caesar had promised a lavish donative to his troops, amounting to about 102.9 million sestertii per legion, for a total obligation of over 3.7 billion sestertii, a sum equal to about 1060% of the total annual revenues of the Roman republic

Observing a militia muster in the early 1800s, an American officer later wrote "I could wish that our Militia, instead of celebrating their feasts to Mars did not too much to Bacchus with carousing and drunkenness."

Sultan Murad III of Turkey (R. 1574-1595), was so impressed by the performance of a troupe of entertainers at the circumcision of his son in 1582 that he enrolled the entire company in the Janissary Corps, at that time perhaps the finest body of infantry in the world.